Research areas

Description of research and teaching

Mikko Tolonen is an assistant professor (tenure track) in digital humanities at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki. His background is in intellectual history and he is the PI of Helsinki Computational History Group (COMHIS) at Helsinki Centre for Digital Humanities (HELDIG). Since 2015 he has been organising Helsinki Digital Humanities Seminar (#helsinkiDH). In 2015-17, as professor of research on digital resources, he worked also in the National Library of Finland and its project on digitized newspapers and Digitalia during its initial phase. Tolonen has played a relevant role building digital humanities infrastructure at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki since 2015. He is the subject head of digital humanities and he has designed the DH teaching module at the Faculty of Arts: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/helsinki-centre-for-digital-humanities/teaching. He was recently elected to the executive board of European Association for Digital Humanities (EADH). He is also on the executive board of Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries (DHN). His current main research focus is on an integrated study of public discourse and knowledge production that combines metadata from library catalogues as well as full-text libraries of books, newspapers and periodicals in early modern Europe. Tolonen works also in other areas of Enlightenment studies, such as the intellectual develpment of Bernard Mandeville and David Hume. In 2016, he was awarded an Open Science and Research Award by Finnish Ministry of Education.

8/2010-8/2012 (2 years) Postdoctoral researcher –Philosophical Psychology, Morality, and Politics Research Unit, a Centre of Excellence in Research at Universities of Helsinki and Jyväskylä, funded by Academy of Finland and directed by professor Simo Knuuttila

10/2012-12/2012 (2 months) career break (family leave)

Education and degrees awarded

1/2010 PhD, Department of History, University of Helsinki, Finland. Doctoral thesis: Self-love and Self-liking in the Moral and Political Philosophy of Bernard Mandeville and David Hume, Graded laudatur

Most significant research funding awarded

9/2017-8/2019 DESIR: Humanities at Scale: Evolving the DARIAH-ERIC, Horizon2020 project with 15 partners (development of Dariah in Finland and possible partnership with Dariah, our funding covers part-time work of an assisting person and travel)

1/2016-12/2019 COMHIS: Computational History and Transformation of Public Discourse in Finland, 1640-1910. Academy of Finland, Digital Humanities Programme Funding, Total funding app. 300000€

3/2015-7/2017 DIGITALIA, Research Center on Digital Information Management, total funding app. 700000€ (together with National Library of Finland and Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences)

membership in national or international expert groups, evaluation or steering committees, as well as other expert duties: Elsevier Negotiations Strategy, committee member (2015-), National Library of Finland; Digitization Project of Kindred Languages (2015-), National Library of Finland; Infrastructure committee for University of Helsinki central campus (2015-)